Texas tries to get between you, your doctor

Updated 11:20 pm, Thursday, August 9, 2012

Texas docs are not known as a particularly liberal bunch. If the group that represents them has problems with the proposed rules that will bar Planned Parenthood from a key state program, it's worth taking note.

For them, the issue isn't abortion; it's about the doctor-patient relationship, patient health and the ability to put everything on the table that needs to be discussed. Even if it's abortion.

In a recent letter to the state, the Texas Medical Association, joined by other medical groups, said Texas is about to embark on a plan for providing medical care to low-income women that will impose a “gag order” on discussing abortion even on doctors working with patients not in the program.

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Other groups, weighing in during the public comment period on proposed state rules, have similar concerns.

It's a plan, they say, that will ensure not enough doctors for this program willing to provide care, including family planning services. And this, they say, will guarantee more unintended pregnancies, more abortions and more illness that might have been prevented for low-income women.

The rules were released earlier this year by the Department of State Health Services, part of Texas' effort to unconstitutionally exclude Planned Parenthood from providing services in the Women's Health Program.

A federal court case will test whether Texas, having declared it will go it alone with WHP after the feds objected to excluding “affiliates” of abortion providers, still can bar Planned Parenthood clinics, though they perform no abortions. Going it alone means forsaking a 9-1 funding match from the federal government.

Welcome to fiscal conservatism Texas style.

You see, the state's plan for its not-so-new-and-improved Texas Women's Health Program is predicated on some women transitioning to Medicaid in 2014 as part of the national health care plan. But Gov. Rick Perry recently declared Texas will not expand Medicaid as envisioned by the plan. Ooops.

But this gag order is a big concern to the docs. So says the Aug. 3 letter, signatures led by Michael E. Speer, president of the Texas Medical Association.

The rules say that a provider participating in the program may not perform or promote elective abortions outside the scope of the program and must not be an affiliate of an entity that does.

The docs correctly read this as overly broad, as interfering with the patient-doctor relationship. They view it as potentially jeopardizing health.

A spokeswoman said it's not the state's intent to interfere in this relationship, that there are more to the rules than suggested and that the state will review the comments to determine if changes are needed. And she said the rules were crafted before the Supreme Court ruling affecting Medicaid expansion.

The Legislature will decide what's next for funding.

Gulp. This is the same Legislature that, in its last session, cut state family planning funding by about two-thirds.

The docs, in their letter, hit the nail on the head: “Whether the issue is guns, smoking, illicit drugs, abortion, or any other controversial issue, the politics du jour should not interfere with the patient-physician relationship.”

Why folks who see Big Government everywhere can't see it here is a mystery.